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Dessert

Belgian Pudding

A bread pudding made with soaked French roll, milk, dried fruit, apples, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, lemon zest, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Belgian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the French roll in boiling milk for 1 hour.

  2. Add sultanas, currants, sugar, chopped apples, chopped peel, egg yolks, nutmeg, and lemon zest.

Cook and serve

  1. Mix well and fold in the whisked egg whites until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with a sweet sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French roll
Soaked in milk, it softens and binds the pudding into a moist, tender body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture as it sets.
Egg whites
Whisked and folded in, they trap air that lightens the pudding's texture.
Apples
Add moisture and a fruity sweetness that stays through the cooking.
Sultanas
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked whites hold air bubbles that lighten the pudding. Overmixing or stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a denser result, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, apple, egg, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, apple, egg, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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